Review: Huawei P9 – We Leica It!

Huawei are no strangers in the smartphone world. They may be a bigger player on home turf, i.e. China, but as makers of the latest Nexus 6P, and already confirmed as the makers of the next Nexus phone, they are already a well established player in the world of Android phone makers. The Huawei P9 is their latest flagship, and while it comes with the P9 Plus and P9 Lite as option, the standard phone is what both are based on, and that is what we have had a good play with. Featuring a dual lens and co-engineered with Leica, this phone packs in a great set of specs and of course, the dual lens technology.

Quick look at specs

Display

5.2in display with a 1920×1080-pixel resolution at 423ppi

Dimensions

145mmx 70.9 mm x 6.95 mm

Weight

144 grams

Storage

32 or 64, plus support for microSD cards up to 128GB

Memory

3 or 4 GB RAM

Processor

Kirin 955 2.5GHz 64-bit ARM-based processor

FrontCamera

8 MP with laser auto focus

Rear Camera

Dual 12 MP with laser auto focus, one RGB lens, one monochrome lens

Battery Life

3000 mAh

Colours

Rose Gold, Prestige Gold, Titanium Grey and Mystic Silver

OS

EMUI 4.1 on top of Android 6.0

The Camera

So, let’s start with the highlights, shall we.

The phone’s announcement focused almost entirely on the camera, and for good reason too. Both the phones offer the exact same dual camera configuration. The combined Leica (or not Leica) lenses give you a great contrast and colour. It works well in all kind of light conditions, and while you can notice that the image stabilisation is not as good as some of the competitors, but it still works great. I can give you a whole load of photo samples to look at, but the internet is full of them. All I can say is that monochrome images definitely shine bright with this one!

What I do like though is that the app offers almost full manual control, and isn’t too far from many others.

Look and feel

The Huawei P9 is not that different from the ever so popular camera design. A fairly square shape embraces you, with a screen in front and a relatively thin bezel.

The back features the fingerprint sensor as well the dual lens camera and the focusing laser and the flash. Unlike the competitors, there is no bulge at the lens.

The right side features the power button and volume keys, while the left features the SIM and SD Card slot. The top has a microphone, while the bottom features speakers as well as a microphone among the USB C slot and the 3.5mm socket. The phone features the same screws Apple uses, which shows off another way Huawei is trying to follow it’s California based big brother.

One of the things that is noticeable about the speaker being at the bottom is that it is very easy to ‘accidentally’ put your finger on the speaker base and totally cut it out.

Display

The display offers bright colours, and works well in the day light. A bit of saturation is noticed in the screen, but not too much.

Performance and Software

The phone offers you the same specs as the P9 when it comes to the processor, and our review model came with the 3GB/32GB variant rather than the higher specced 4GB/64GB version. This drives EMUI 4.1 running on top of Android 6, and in many ways, this is the only downfall to a great bit of hardware. EMUI is one of those love it or hate it kind of skins, and while Huawei have done well in getting their hardware down to a tee, the software still leaves a bit to be desired. The problem with EMUI is that it is a bit closed, and hides the App Drawer as standard. There are ways around it, such as installing Google’s own Now Launcher, or our personal favourite, the Nova Launcher. You still have to deal with the standard EMUI UI though, i.e. with the settings and the lock screen and such like. Not all is bad news though, as Huawei have definitely squeezed in a few good features there that are not standard on Android. It is no Cyanogen though.

Then there is the matter of all the adware that comes loaded on this. There are games you cannot uninstall, and there are ‘stock apps’ that you cannot get rid of. While it is fine to have something Huawei branded to have such rights, I am not sure Spider Man is worthy of having a ‘cannot be uninstalled’ lock on itself.

Speaking of actual performance though, with 3GB of RAM and a highly specced processor, this phone has not given me any reason to have any issues. It is fast, it works well, and there isn’t any lag to report off.

Battery Life

The battery life has been fairly impressive on the P9. In fact, with the ‘locked down’ features of the EMUI, battery life is definitely one of the major advantages. Not unlike the other variations from Huawei, it offers a fairly decent battery life.

More information

More information on the Huawei P9 Plus can be found on the Huawei website. It retails for £430, and is available via various online retailers such as Amazon.

Verdict

The Huawei P9 is a very decent phone at a very decent price. It may not be the best phone out there, but at just over £400, you’re getting a great flagship for not much price.

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Can be found somewhere between designing new tech as an electronics engineer or testing new tech as a technology enthusiast. Lives mostly on Twitter, and would love to have a word with you there as @smacula.

Just got one of these on an EE upgrade – picked it over the Samsung S7 because I don’t like Samsung’s bloated Touchwiz. Anyway – P9…..fast, feels nice, SD card storage, nice screen. But….very aggressive memory management meant I had to do a lot of fiddling to get some apps to run in the background and get notifications, and the responsiveness of the touchscreen isn’t the best I’ve used. It’ll do for six months (which is as long as it normally takes me to get bored and buy something else).

Hope that an easy root method shows up soon though….desperately need to adjust the DPI settings – can’t understand why every phone maker ignores this setting and makes status icons, etc, so big. Even on the smallest setting, every phone displays stuff too large for me.

Currently using Nova Launcher (it’s always been my go-to launcher) and although I can make desktop/draw icons smaller (and their associated text) there’s no way (that I can see) to make OS elements smaller – status icons, buttons in apps, etc.